Shaping Up Your Route Guidance

Are you sticking to your 2016 New Year’s Resolutions? At Mapzen, our goal was to “shape up” in the new year too, and thanks to some route guidance improvements, the user will be heading in the right (correct) direction. Whether the shape of your path is a fork, a circle, or a ’T’, these latest improvements are certain to provide clarity. Since the June State of the Map US Conference, we have been continuing to improve the narrative with regards to car, bicycle, and pedestrian modes of transportation. We’ve included some before and after examples to better explain the enhancements.

Car Narrative Improvement

We added code to identify and process forks. Forks typically occur at highway-to-highway transitions with the absence of a ramp or at ramp-to-ramp transitions.

This is a snapshot of the I 95 South/I 895 South highway fork. Now, thanks to the improvement, the user will notice the proper relative direction and interchange information.

Pedestrian Narrative Improvement

We updated the logic to call out a turn at a ’T’ intersection even if the street names are the same, making it clear to the user which way to go at the ’T’ (Onyx Drive in the example below). We softened the start maneuver (Go vs. Head) and added the side of street to the the destination maneuver.